Dame Valerie Adams: How to develop confidence (and dominate life)

Having your confidence knocked as a kid is pretty damaging. And I think it happens to most of us in different ways. Some of us were bigger kids, some were smaller, some looked different, some talked different – it doesn’t really matter what it was. Fact is, we’ve all felt like that at some stage in our lives. But that’s not what matters. What matters is how we move past it.

I found my refuge on the sports field. That was the place I felt wanted – where I felt normal. I felt confident because my size and strength were a plus. I could utilise my physical being in order to help me succeed.

It was an incredible discovery for me but still, as soon as I stepped away from the sporting arena, all of that confidence vanished. I’d go from being the one that everybody wanted on their team, the popular one, back to the girl with size 14 feet. It was difficult, flipping between these two different versions of myself.

But as I got older, I slowly began to learn that there aren’t “two versions” of me at all. There is just one. And if that girl can go out there and dominate, and be confident and resilient on the sporting field, she can damn well do it in everyday life too.

Building confidence is a process. It involves being exposed to difficult and challenging situations, day after day, year after year, and gradually building this understanding that you can overcome things.

When we were kids, mum would try and feed five mouths on $40 a week. I lost both my parents young, I’ve been through a divorce, I’ve been really sick, I had my son premature and now he’s been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. I’ve dealt with a lot of difficult things in my life. And I don’t believe for a second that I deserved it, but I do believe I’ve been dealt these things because I can handle it.

I think, when it comes to confidence, that a lot of us believe that you need to be confident before you do something difficult or challenging. When really, I think confidence comes from exposing ourselves to difficult or challenging situations.

When my son was first diagnosed with diabetes, it was a shock to the system, and there was this whole grieving process. I tried to explain how I felt, but I couldn’t. It was such a lot to take in – having to give him insulin, having to monitor him to make sure his blood sugars don’t drop, it was a lot. And of course, I was terrified. It was all so overwhelming.